Menswear’s Dark Wolf

“The Dark Wolf” is an apt name for both Ada + Nik’s F/W 2014 short film and their collection, which debuted in London on Monday. “We cast a set of true rebels including Olympian Tom Brady and electro musician Aiden,” explains co-designer Nik Thakkar. “We had a really colorful and creative cast. Each model was chosen on their personal attributes as much as their look.”

Ada + Nik’s latest collection marks a continuation and evolution of their Greco-Roman and punk-inspired S/S show. “We saw what stuck and what did well from Spring and Summer 2014, and we understood more about who the Ada + Nik man is,” Thakkar tells us. Impeccable leather biker jackets will undoubtedly be a trademark and mainstay of the brand. The catwalk on Monday was studded with five iterations of the biker jacket—including a double-breasted, patent-leather version and a blazer-inspired jacket—as well as a quilted-sleeve version worn by Thakkar’s design partner Ada Zanditon.

There is, however, a darker, cleaner-cut maturity to Ada + Nik’s F/W look, which saturates the short fashion film they created to introduce the collection. In the film, which we are premiering here, Ada + Nik’s designs play backdrop and character to director Oz Thakkar’s dark whimsy of a dystopian vision. Emerging MTV Unsigned rapper SMITH LDN plays a warrior struggling to save his brother from a primitive alternate reality, in which model Nikita Andrianova plays the guiding Snow Queen. The theme of brotherhood is an important one for Thakkar with this collection, so recruiting his filmmaker brother, Oz, to direct was a natural fit.

Thakkar also enlisted Serbian visual artist Ljubba for the project, to bring life to his and Zanditon’s vision via “a combination of VFX and live action.” Of SMITH, Thakkar says, “The man is a genius. He is this Woodkid-meets-Kanye West hybrid—super art focused and incredibly talented. As soon as we met him and heard the track ‘Anthem For The Lost,’ we knew we wanted him to be a part of the process. He’s a rebel and a true Ada + Nik man.”

Above all else, striking geometrical silhouettes and seamless androgyny shine in the short film, and stand as a pretty formidable hint of the label’s 30-look collection. The video is jarring in plot and coherency, but stunning in visual aesthetic. Ultimately, it accomplishes what it aims to and creates an enticing look at an unorthodox and highly creative collection.